Fertile Ground

Last weekend, I was noticing how green everything in the great outdoors is at this time of year (when it is not quite summer but sure feels like summer), and I found myself thinking about fertility.

This is a family friendly blog, so get your head out of the gutter and don’t assume I was thinking something inappropriate. Actually, I was thinking about how we at Imagine! are in the enviable position of being right on top of fertile ground for improving the lives of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD).

This fertile ground starts with the huge numbers of new resources that have been put into Colorado’s funding system for services for people with I/DD. These resources opened the door for many more individuals in need to get the vital services they need. Gov. John Hickenlooper and the Colorado Legislature have recognized that the community of providers has struggled through some lean years in terms of funding, and this new funding should help ease the belt-tightening and allow for a significant reduction of waiting lists.

At the same time, we have seen an influx of new faces and ideas at all levels of our system, and the lines of communication between the systems many stakeholders seems to be improving, to the benefit of all.

Of course, being on fertile ground does not guarantee that new plants will grow healthy and strong. You need to have the skills and tools required to be able to cultivate the crops so they can develop to their full potential. And I feel very good about how Imagine! is positioned to truly cultivate the fertile ground we find ourselves tending.

One key reason that I think we are well positioned to make the most of these new opportunities is our approach to hiring new talent. In many ways, we have shifted our recruitment and hiring emphasis to focus on potential. Strange as it may sound, sometimes the person with the best resume or interview skills isn’t actually the best candidate for the job. As this brilliant article from Harvard Business Review by Claudio Fernández-Aráoz makes clear, “what makes someone successful in a particular role today might not tomorrow if the competitive environment shifts, the company’s strategy changes, or he or she must collaborate with or manage a different group of colleagues. So the question is not whether your company’s employees and leaders have the right skills; it’s whether they have the potential to learn new ones.”

If I’ve learned anything from my 30+ years in this field, it is that change is the only constant. Rules change, funding changes, people change, philosophies change, technologies change. The list could on and on, and the pace of change seems to increase every year. That means that an employee who isn’t able to adapt will quickly find him or herself obsolete. Having an expertise in a certain skill won’t help you if that skill is suddenly no longer useful and you can’t adapt, or worse, you become irrelevant. I’ve seen that happen to individuals as well as to organizations.

Furthermore, as those in our field continue to emphasize (and rightly so, I might add) person centered thinking in service delivery, we must recognize that flexibility and adaptability go hand in hand with a person centered approach. I often point out that in 2013, Imagine! served some 2,600 individuals. Of those 2,600 individuals, each had his or her own unique needs, goals, dreams, and ideals. There is no way, and there never has been a way, for a “one size fits all” approach to service delivery to be successful in our field (although some have tried hard to make it so).

Imagine! is an organization driven toward innovation, and we find ourselves at one of the most fertile times in our 51-year history. I feel confident that we have the skills, the employees, and most of all, the desire to take full advantage of this fertility so we can grow and create more opportunities for individuals with I/DD to live their lives to their full potential. We are a group of talented and committed gardeners, and I expect our garden to be bountiful for many years to come.

Then again, what do I know?